From Mulan (1998) to Mulan (2020): Disney Conventions, Cross-Cultural Feminist Intervention, and a Compromised Progress

Directed by the feminist filmmaker Niki Caro, Disney’s 2020 live-action remake of Mulan (1998) strove to be a more gender progressive, culturally appropriate, and internationally successful adaptation of the Chinese legend of Mulan than the animated original. Contrary to the film’s intended effect, however, it was a critical and financial letdown. The film was criticized for a wide range of issues, including making unpopular changes to the animated original, misrepresenting Chinese culture and history, perpetuating Orientalist stereotypes, and demonizing Inner Asian steppe nomads. In addition, the film also faced boycott calls amid political controversies surrounding China. It received exceptionally low audience ratings in both the US and China, grossing a total well under its estimated budget. This article argues that Mulan (2020) is not, as many believe, just another Disney film suffering from simple artistic inability, cultural insensitivity, or political injustice, but a window into the tension-ridden intersectionality of the gender, sexual, racial, cultural, and political issues that shape the production and reception of today’s cross-cultural films. It discusses three major problems, the Disney problem, the gender problem, and the cultural problem, that Mulan (2020) tackled with respectful efforts in Caro’s feminist filmmaking pattern. The film made significant compromises between its goals of cultural appropriateness, progressive feminism, and monetary success. Although it eventually failed to satisfactorily resolve these at times conflicting missions, it still achieved important progress in addressing some serious gender and cultural problems in Mulan’s contemporary intertextual metamorphosis, especially those introduced by the Disney animation. By revealing Mulan (2020)’s value and defects, this article intends to flesh out some real-world challenges that feminist movements must overcome to effectively transmit messages and bring about changes at the transcultural level in the arts.

A fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis of corruption and homicide in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries through the lens of the institutional anomie theory

Institutional Anomie Theory has been widely used in the study of criminal phenomena. Institutional Anomie Theory offers a macro explanation of crime because it locates the cause of crime in the anomie created by the combination of a cultural overemphasis on monetary success and restricted economic opportunity. In such a context, the economy dominates the social macrostructure and non-economic social institutions (family, education, polity) may counterbalance (Merton's approach) or reinforce (Messner and Rosenfeld's approach) economic pressures. Institutional Anomie Theory has been tested with multivariate regression and with multilevel modelling. Neither of these statistical approaches addresses the question of which combinations of institutions lead to criminal behaviour. This study attempts to fill this gap by using the fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis which allows multiple causality and asymmetric analysis of high and low crime rates. Based on the Institutional Anomie Theory theoretical model, this study demonstrates the existence of conditions for corruption and homicide in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries. The results are generally consistent with Merton's approach. It is shown that economic pressures combined with weak social institutions condition the extent of corruption and homicide in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries. However, there are differences between the two types of crime. The results also suggest that there is no symmetry in the causal combinations between high and low crime rates. The implications of these findings are discussed.

What Is New in the Preventive and Therapeutic Role of Dairy Products as Nutraceuticals and Functional Foods?

Nutraceuticals have taken on considerable significance due to their supposed safety and possible nutritional and medicinal effects. Pharmaceutical and dietary companies are conscious of monetary success, which benefits healthier consumers and the altering trends that result in these heart-oriented value-added products being proliferated. Numerous nutraceuticals are claimed to have multiple therapeutic benefits despite advantages, and unwanted effects encompass a lack of substantial evidence. Several common nutraceuticals involve glucosamine, omega-3, Echinacea, cod liver oil, folic acid, ginseng, orange juice supplemented with calcium, and green tea. This review is dedicated to improving the understanding of nutrients based on specific illness indications. It was reported that functional foods contain physiologically active components that confer various health benefits. Studies have shown that some foods and dietary patterns play a major role in the primary prevention of many ailment conditions that lead to putative functional foods being identified. Research and studies are needed to support the possible health benefits of different functional foods that have not yet been clinically validated for the relationships between diet and health. The term “functional foods” may additionally involve health/functional health foods, foods enriched with vitamins/minerals, nutritional improvements, or even conventional medicines.

Posada, José Guadalupe (1852–1913)

A seminal printmaker of Mexico City at the turn of the twentieth century, José Guadalupe Posada is most recognizable for his calaveras, images of skulls and skeletons that satirized politicians, aristocrats, and corruption in Mexican society. Though he received little acclaim or monetary success during his lifetime, Posada’s work was rediscovered by the Mexican avant-garde in the early 1920s, including Jean Charlot, Dr. Atl, Diego Rivera, and José Clemente Orozco. For these artists, Posada represented an artistic precedent outside of the European tradition, and a link between the images of Pre-Columbian art and their own. The most famous of the calaveras is a character Posada called La Catrina, whose image is ubiquitous in pop-cultural imagery produced for the Day of the Dead.

Current Regulatory requirements for Registration of Nutraceuticals in India and USA

There is growing recognition of the potential role for nutraceuticals and dietary supplements in helping to reduce health risks and improve health quality. Pharmaceutical and nutritional companies are aware of the monetary success taking advantage of the nutraceuticals and dietary supplements. Nutraceuticals has proven health benefits and their Consumption will keep disease at bay and allow humans to maintain an overall good health. Functional foods and internationally products represent a value added growth opportunity both domestically and internationally. Development of better characterized and research proven products will help enhance consumer confidence in nutraceutical and functional food products in the world. Regulatory aspects of such products were in a state of confusion in 20th century. Till date the regulations are not harmonized for the globe and change from country to country. But now it is clearly understood that the regulations for clinical evidence and safety of such products cannot be less stringent than rules for modern medicines and thus the science of nutraceutical is progressing. The global nutraceutical market will reach $285.0 billion by 2021 from $198.7 billion in 2016 at CAGR of 7.5% from 2016-2021. The present research has been devoted towards better understanding of the nutraceuticals and its regulation in India and USA.

Lardner, Ring

Ring Lardner was a sharp-witted American humorist who had an amazing ear for malapropisms, idioms, and the lively vernacular of early 20th-century Chicago and later the East Coast. Originally a sports writer for baseball, Lardner branched out to short stories in 1914, when he wrote serial fiction for the Saturday Evening Post. This job lead to him honing the authorial control that lead to him creating three original and beloved fictional characters. They were the baseball player Jack Keefe (who appeared in the Saturday Evening Post stories); later, an unnamed but sarcastic husband; and years later, Fred Gross, an inept detective. His unique, first-person stories held an air of authenticity and daring. Readers loved his work for the style and subjects that transcended the stodgy halls of refined literature, and yet intellectuals mined them for the brilliant irony and cultural criticism. Lardner developed a reputation as a complex writer whose column, nonetheless, was read weekly by the mainstream, not just the experts. Additionally, critics saw immediate value in how Lardner let himself be fascinated by the social microcosm of baseball (with minor leaguers maneuvering to rise in the ranks); he saw in it a parallel to class struggles in America. When he later became an actual Long Island neighbor of American novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald, he sought to capture in literature the decadence of the American lifestyle. His later work was fiercely critical of shallow attitudes, social climbing, and the tendency for business interests to undermine culture. By 1929, Lardner's rough lifestyle and utter disenchantment with America—as well as a tuberculosis diagnosis—took a toll on his creative output. He had been a binge drinker since his days as Fitzgerald's socialite neighbor. His drinking was fueled by his deep vein of disgust for his own society. His wildly comedic and witty writing belied his own weaknesses, including succumbing to the stress of being financially responsible for his family. Monetary success eventually came in 1930, when he coauthored a musical, “June Moon.” It was fleeting, however; the next years saw him produce a weekly radio column and rehash the Jack Keefe adventures in a 1933 redux of fictional baseball letters, titled Lose with a Smile. He died that year, of a heart attack, on September 25. He was forty-eight years old.

Is Self-Sacrificial Competitive Altruism Primarily a Male Activity?

This study explored the basis of self-sacrificial prosocial behavior in small groups. Seventy-eight undergraduates (39M, 39F) filled out a thirty-item personality scale and then participated in a “group problem-solving study” in which the monetary success of a three-person group depended upon one of its members volunteering to endure pain (a cold stressor test) and inconvenience (being soaked in a dunk tank). There were 13 groups consisting of two females and one male, and 13 groups consisting of two males and one female. Across groups, the behavior of the altruist was judged to be more costly, challenging, and important and he/she was liked better, rewarded with more money, and preferred as a future experimental partner. Groups containing two males showed more evidence of competition to become altruists than groups containing two females, and personality traits were more effective predictors of altruistic behavior in males than in females. We conclude that competition between males and “showing off” are key factors in triggering self-sacrificial altruistic behavior.

Predictors of Beliefs about Money

This study was done to examine the causal structure of attitudinal variables that relate to beliefs about money. In all 306 subjects completed various questionnaires measuring the work ethic, achievement motivation, mastery, competitiveness, conformity, and beliefs about money. Path analysis indicated the variables of work ethic, conformity, and mastery operated indirectly through the mediating effect on achievement motivation, competitiveness, and beliefs about money. Factors such as work ethic, mastery, and achievement appear to have a direct causal effect on competitiveness. Ultimately in our culture, monetary success is a result of successful competitiveness.